Guilty As Charged
by ro-lal
Summary: Now he's really stuck, isn't he? He's basically in charge of Stark Industries, then Iron Man, then a consultant of SHIELD, and now a super secret triple agent in a vampire guild. Go Tony, way to screw yourself over.


_So I did it again. This one's been rotting in the back of my head for months, easily. I've been dropping sentences in its little document for the same amount of time, in between Circles of Rust and Responsibility. Both have been causing me a certain amount of consternation recently, so I told myself that while on my trip to the mainland US I wouldn't do any work on them... which I already went back on, because there are a couple paragraphs of rustfic chapter 15 sneaking around in its document. Of course, then I said, "okay Steve, enough writing. Enjoy your roomies and get yourself fat on crazy food and then go hike in the Grand Canyon for hours to work it all off. Put the notebook away." But it was so HARD cuz the trip from Vegas to Williams, Arizona is THREE HOURS and if I had to stare out the window with nothing to do but listen to Talia whine about being stuck in the back of the van for ANY LONGER I would break the window and jump._

_I am such a hypocrite, because while I openly can't stand most (any) vampire novels? I'm all over vampire fics._

_Anyway, tell me what you think! Like rustfic, this fic is based off of my own inspiration as much as it is reader feedback. It's very likely that I won't find it in myself to continue alone, and that's what you perfect people are for! Tell me how I'm doing! Please? I'm sure I don't need to outline any embarrassing actions I may have mentioned in several chapters of other fics whenever I get a comment._

_So... nervous cough... Enjoy?_

**8**

The sexual tension is rising.

Clint swallows, sweat dripping liquid trails down his back as he tries not to stare. The atmosphere is stifling, airless, even with the gaping hole in the east wall. He slumps over the warming steel table, mourning the loss of the sweet chill it held only minutes ago. The other Avengers lie in a similar state of melting misery, defeated by the summer haze - excluding, of course, one Tony Stark. The bottle in the armor's hand glistens with condensation and oh, what Clint would give to just lick that off. But Tony himself is doing a good enough job of that for everyone.

He reclines in his Iron Man armor, water bottle of fruit punch in hand, very clearly enjoying his ice cold drink while everyone else suffers. It's borderline pornographic, really, what with the way he gives a quiet moan every time he swallows, eyes half-lidded and a light pink dusting his cheeks. His helmet rests on its side on the floor by his feet.

"Stark," Clint groans, "quit being such a slut."

Tony raises an eyebrow in his direction and grins. "I'm glad you think so highly of me," he answers, and chooses that moment to wrap his lips around the end of the bottle and toss it back.

"You need to not have a gag reflex to swallow that much at once," Natasha observes from where her head rests on her forearms. No one is brave enough to comment on her midriff-baring tank top and are those Clint's MLP boxers?

Tony only snickers.

"I'm sorry," Bruce says again, voice slightly muffled from his slouched position in his chair, hands over his face, "for breaking the wall." He's more modestly dressed, in rolled-up slacks and a white button-down shirt with short sleeves. He has really bad taste in shoes, though, apart from dress shoes. His toes rest on the soles of his open-toed brown sandals.

"It is all right, friend Banner," Thor says in what was probably meant to be an assuring tone, but really this and the slap on the back only makes him loud and intimidating. Bruce looks up, eyebrow raised. "You did not intend to cause such damage to friend Stark's tower, I am sure, and your large alter ego was surely only trying to help. The destruction of such property is naught but a small inconvenience." He grins."Worse things have happened."

Bruce groans and drops his head into his hands. "Thanks, Thor," he mutters, "you're a great help."

Thor's smile brightens. "You are welcome."

"I already accepted your apology," Tony says, "and it's getting old, so quit it."

"A simple apology shouldn't -" Bruce starts to object, but Tony cuts him off by firmly setting his capped and empty juice bottle on the table in front of him.

"An apology is all I need," he explains. "It won't cost too much to fix. I'll even fix it myself. Big Green can help."

"That is so far from a good idea," Bruce says flatly, "even Clint wouldn't consider it."

"You know what I'm considering?" Clint asks loudly, looking up. "I'm considering persuading Stark to fix the damn electricity." He runs a hand through sweat-spiked hair. "It's hot," he adds in complaint.

"J is fabricating the new reactor, shut up," Tony says crossly, jabbing a finger at the floor. "It'll be done when it's done, and J's taking his time for the sole reason that you need to learn how to wait."

"How much longer?" Natasha demands, glowering at the empty bottle.

"However long it takes," Tony answers with a sigh. He closes his eyes and flicks his shades down from his hair. "I don't have any working computers, obviously, since the whole tower is dead, and JARVIS is running on his backup reserves so we can't ask him. Feel free to try, though. I could use a laugh."

"You're an ass," she says bluntly. He puts a metal hand over the reactor, wincing.

"You wound me."

Clint groans, his head hitting the table with a loud thunk that reverberates throughout his skull. Ugh.

Steve is snoring softly in the corner.

"Where may I obtain this red juice you continue to drink?" Thor asks curiously. Tony lifts his shades and gives the god a look.

"Nowhere," he replies seriously. "It's mine. My fruit punch. And in case you didn't get this yet? I don't share."

Clint sits up, interested. "How come we can't have some?"

"Because it's mine," says Tony, in the voice that clearly states 'why are you bothering to question me when you are clearly in the wrong?'.

"I can find it," Natasha says, in a voice that contains both the idle interest of 'challenge accepted' as well as the dark undertone of a promise unique to her.

"Sure you can," Tony says amiably, "but you can't have any of it." He looks so calm, so sure, leaning back in his steel chair with his legs crossed, even as he reaches for the bottle discretely. Clint sees, however, how Tasha is tracking his every movement. "It's my special mix, you see."

"And we can't have it, why?" he inquires. Tony turns a sardonic eye on him.

"Please, Clint," he scoffs, "JARVIS protects my secrets."

Natasha stands up, deep blue tank top sticking to her curves, and disappears into the kitchen area. Tony takes the opportunity to snatch up the bottle, tucking it under his arm (Clint spends a moment wondering how, exactly, is he not crushing it?) before visibly relaxing in the suit.

"Why is it so hot," Clint complains again, for lack of anything better to do.

"Because I broke the wall," Bruce sighs.

"Because the tower's reactor ran out of juice," Tony says irritably, frowning at Bruce, who is studiously examining his own hands. Thor hums thoughtfully, absentmindedly playing with the ponytail Natasha tied his hair up into. "When I plugged Upper Manhattan's power grid into mine that one week, it drained the reactor of three months' worth of power."

"Can I not restore its strength, as I did to your armor when we first met?" He asks, but Tony shakes his head.

"Not if you don't want to fry everything in the harbor. It's underwater, unfortunately."

"I see." He looks disappointed, but otherwise unaffected by the heat in a white t-shirt and cargo pants.

"If anything," Tony continues, "this floor is the coolest because of the new ventilation." He gestures at the hole in the wall with a tiny smirk, the sounds of the city ninety-three floors down reaching them even in his penthouse. "There might be some water downstairs," he adds, "with some ice, if you're interested. None up here, though."

"I shall take you up on this offer," Thor says graciously, getting to his bare feet and pushing his chair in after him. "Many thanks, friend Stark."

"No problem, Pikachu," Tony replies, smirking widely now. "Bring Katniss and Brucie-bear some too?"

"I would be glad to," Thor announces over the others' protests at their nicknames, and jogs down the stairwell. Natasha chooses this time to reappear like the fucking ninja she is, a slip of paper in hand. On closer inspection, it seems to be a notecard with some notes written in Tony's hand, with his favourite glittery red pen. She waves it around triumphantly, smiling smugly. Clint and Bruce sit up, curiosity piqued.

"I found your secret recipe, Stark," she says, with all the self-satisfaction of a cat who got the cream. "Not sure how you drink this, but here it is." Tony stares at her as she lets the card flutter to the surface of the table.

Clint snatches it up immediately, Bruce peering over his shoulder to get a peek.

"Beets, apples, cherries, blended maraschino cherries, strawberry syrup, mineral supplements (powdered), glucose syrup, water, salt, potassium, tabasco sauce," he reads aloud, cringing as the items get more and more ridiculous. "God, I can't even pronounce all of these, and why exactly would you need calcium in a drink that's not milk?"

"Shut it, it tastes amazing," Tony says defensively, curling around the bottle in an oddly protective manner.

"There is no way," Bruce says, vaguely horrified, "absolutely no way, that it tastes any kind of amazing."

"I said it's my special mix, didn't I?" Tony glares at them, snatching at the list of ingredients. Clint allows it to slip from between his fingers, staring at the empty bottle with a level of disgust he hasn't felt since that warehouse of half-decomposed bodies in Turkey eight years ago.

"Gross," he says, with feeling. "You can have your nasty hell juice."

"Thank you." Tony rolls his eyes and tucks the recipe for disaster into a thin compartment of the suit. "I'm pretty sure I warned you not to pry."

"Actually, you practically invited me to," Natasha corrects him. "This is literally a witch's brew of inedible liquid. What the hell."

"It's mostly water," he protests, "and the rest is just to taste."

"I am never trying it," Clint says vehemently, "ever in my life."

"Good," Tony shoots back, but is interrupted by a high-pitched squeal of feedback, and the dark room lights up. The screen on the south wall comes to life, showing one Director Fury's face. Apparently wherever he is has power, or else he's simply immune to any kind of weather in his leather getup.

"Stark," he begins, but Clint interrupts.

"You said your computers don't work," he says accusingly, jabbing a finger at Tony, who bristles.

"They don't," he snaps, "for anyone but me. JARVIS, kick Colonel Eyepatch off my servers."

Fury has no time to speak before the screen goes dark. Tony heaves a sigh of relief, but then another monitor glows to life.

"J-"

"I need you to get your ass over here," Fury talks right over Tony, eye narrowing. "Consultant work."

"Ah, no?" Tony answers, grimacing. "See, I just got my house broken out of, and I'm on lunch break. Consulting hours have changed, though, you can call Miss Potts for more information."

"How about you be at the helicarrier in twenty minutes or I'll send a team to get you," Fury says, "or maybe Agent Romanoff can escort you."

"With pleasure," she chirps behind him. Tony tries not to shudder.

"Some idiot left what looks like a cup of coffee outside the door to the reactor room," Fury moves on, "which you keep locked to your biosignature. Things are smoking that weren't before, and since you're so damn paranoid we have no choice but to call you."

"What if I just want to watch you suffer?" Tony challenges, arms crossed. Fury visibly represses a sigh.

"If this boat falls, it'll be on your tower," he promises.

"Ouch, that won't do. Fine, I'll be over in a bit." He waves a hand, cutting the connection, and picks up the helmet. "One hundred and ninety-three minutes until the tower's new reactor is completed," he says to Clint, and is gone.

No one sees what happened to the empty bottle.

**8**

Coulson is waiting for him when he lands on the helicarrier, but apparently isn't in the mood for small talk.

"This way," he says crisply, turning on his heel and marching across the deck. Tony has no choice, really, but to follow.

By now, all the agents are familiar with his presence, being the sole mechanic for the entire craft. They even stopped snapping pictures of his armor last month; they probably got tired of him remotely wiping their phones. He makes s point to be as flashy as possible, poking fun at the agents as he passes and having a skeleton JARVIS run through their files, wreaking havoc. Coulson just watches with a raised eyebrow, unamused, until he gets a call.

"Stark," he says, voice sharper than the lines of his suit, "with me."

"Bye, kiddies," Tony sings, picking his helmet up off the computer to his right, and follows the agent out of the main room.

Though Tony has a lot he wants to say, from 'get some pictures for your walls' to 'what the hell is going on', the pronounced stress lines on Coulson's face are enough for him to keep his mouth shut and follow.

The helicarrier is a maze of brushed steel hallways and windows into laboratories and communications with various important people and organizations on every corner. If he hadn't designed and built it, he would be lost for sure. As it is, it's a little dizzying to see the full extent of the ship made real. He mentally pulls up the blueprints and tracks their progress through the bowels of the law division. They don't stop at the Director's floor, though, a vaguely alarming fact that worries Tony, but push on to what's affectionally known as the brig by agents who frequent it. The brig, of course, is a collection of four levels: one for interrogation, two for specialized containment cells, and one where they bring prisoners in and dispose of the bodies.

"Sit," Coulson says, indicating a room to his right on the first floor of the brig. Tony swallows, nervous, but obeys. The agent nods, satisfied, and disappears.

The room is large, cement-walled, with a table and two chairs bolted to the floor and a single fluorescent light embedded into the high ceiling. There are several security cameras - six, JARVIS counts, while Tony can only see three - tracking his every movement. It's so stereotypical, it's frightening. The place puts him on edge, and he fights the urge to jump when the thick steel door closes behind him.

He waits there for a very long time.

"Anthony Edward Stark." Fury's voice precedes him as the door swings open once more, allowing the director entry. He sweeps in, his leather cost surprisingly not flaring dramatically as he moves. Tony stays in his seat, armor collapsed into its briefcase form. "Born May 29, 1970. Son of Howard and Maria Stark."

Tony raises one eyebrow, then the other as Fury reels off everything in his file and more. It's more than a small discomfort to hear his life laid out before him, with nothing but a wall, his own reflection, or Fury himself to look at. He chooses instead to close his eyes, letting the outline of his college years wash over him as he relives every memory mentioned. The sad thing is, he can't deny any of the things Fury chooses to highlight, because no matter how bad it sounds it's all true.

After fifteen solid minutes of this, he interrupts Fury's (biased) description of his thirty-seventh year. "What exactly is the point of this?" he demands, drumming his fingers on the steel table.

"Shortly after your thirty-eighth birthday, you were to be given an Apogee award in Las Vegas, which of course you ignored," Fury barrels on, glaring. "Instead, you kept up your reputation by gambling and bringing home one Vanity Fair reporter, a Christine Everheart, age thirty-two, with a degree in journalism from Ohio University in 2001. The next day, you went on a trip to Afghanistan for a weapons demonstration, recommended to you by your business partner. You didn't know that he'd ordered a hit on you."

Tony stares at his hands, frozen.

"You returned from Afghanistan via a military plane, exactly ninety-seven days after you initially left, and declared yourself a changed man. But it's not the arc reactor that we were interested in."

Here he sighs, lowering himself into the opposite chair, and slides a manila folder across the table. Tony puts his hands over it but doesn't open it. He knows. Fury knows. The whole of SHIELD knows, no doubt, after his actions with Agent Coulson before he created the new reactor. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit -

"We appreciate your assistance as Iron Man." Now Fury looks deathly serious, and old. Stressed. Tired. "As a member of the Avengers. As a consultant for SHIELD." He steeples his fingers. "Generally we don't involve our assets with problems in the general public. We let Homeland Security handle that. But this is different."

Tony tenses, refuses to admit to himself that he's afraid.

"I only know about this because Agent Coulson is required to tell me personally if anything is different from what we know about the Avengers. You counted, even before we decided you shouldn't be involved. I am the only other person who knows."

His pulse is racing, his heart pounding against the arc reactor, but he sits still.

"Look, Stark," Fury says, "we know it happened in Afghanistan. I won't pry, because I don't need to know the logistics of it. I -"

"Oh , just say it already," Tony snarls suddenly, slamming his hands on the table. "I'm sick of you dancing around it."

Fury looks at him closely. "Alright," he says neutrally. "You're a vampire. Nobody else in SHIELD is. I know because you bit Coulson when he was at your house in 2010."

"And?" Tony is trembling, minutely, so it's only visible in his hands, and he curses himself for it.

"And so we need you," Fury says, "to join an anonymous guild and be our eyes."

Tony scoffs. "Why should I? There are dozens of so-called guilds across New York, and none of them are worth shit."

"Because," Fury says patiently, "you are the only vampire SHIELD knows about. And the guild we want you to join has over seventy members."

Tony pales. "But that's more than thirty percent of the country's vampire population."

"We know," Fury affirms. "Even more are gathering in New York, and we need to know why."

Tony thinks about this, hard. Things have changed, in the span of three minutes. Instead of just Pepper, Rhodey, and Coulson knowing, now Fury does too. If he doesn't go with it, who knows what they'll ask him to do? Turn an agent? Find another of his kind? Blackmail him into doing it? It's dangerous enough just living with the other Avengers, but doing actual Underground work as well? That's a big risk. Steve was a vampire hunter in the war, for shit's sake, and Clint and Natasha have no small hatred for them. If they get a call for any attack, anonymous or no, every vampire in the guilt could rat him out if they got caught. He would be killed on the spot, along with the poor idiot who stepped out of line.

But there's a good reason all the vampires are gathering, and Tony needs to know why. SHIELD needs to shut it down.

"How long will this take?" he asks, and hates how his voice betrays him.

"Standard infiltration missions take anywhere from three days to several years," Fury explains. "It depends on how quickly you can get us information, and how often they meet."

"You don't know?"

"Not yet."

Tony nods, steeling himself for what's to come. "I'll do it."


End file.
